15 miners feared drowned in water-filled Meghalaya mine

Fifteen miners are feared to have drowned inside a water-filled mine in Meghalaya's South Garo Hills district. They have been trapped since Friday afternoon in the mine at Rongsa Awe village.

Rescue workers have been pumping out water from the mine for the past 48 hours, but the efforts have not yielded any result. Incessant rainfall has added to the crisis, district officials said.

"There were 30 miners inside. Half of them managed to come out when the rat-hole mine began flooding. It is suspected that the miners punctured the wall of a flooded abandoned mine alongside and the water gushed in," Meghalaya police chief N Ramachandran told HT from state capital Shillong.

"Rat-holes are unscientific mines with very little manoeuvring space, and miners often cut through in different directions. The ones that got trapped could be deeper down. We could have helped rescue them had the mine owners informed us immediately," he added.

Rat-hole mines dot Meghalaya, with miners using primitive tools to burrow in and extract coal, unscientifically and indiscriminately. These mines are privately owned by local tribal communities and the government has little or no control over them.

The ill-fated mine belonged to the nokma or traditional chief of the remote village.